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Relative Advantage of Using Technology to Make the Content Areas More Engaging, Relevant and Authentic

You are taking a walk and you come upon an emergency. It might be a house on fire, someone is unconscious or an act of violence is being perpetuated. What could you do? Did I mention it is 1914? In 1914, if you needed to get help, chances are they will arrive too late. However, in 2014, most people have cell phones and help can be there in minutes. Technology today helps us in so many positive ways outside of school. Why should we not use it to help our students in positive ways inside the school?

Today’s students have grown up on technology. It has been apart of their lives as far as they can remember. Not always a good thing, but a real thing. Since it is so real, by using technology in the classroom, we can tie what we are teaching our students to their lives and make learning a part of their lives. And that is a good thing.

Ever notice students talking about a movie they saw? It might have been designed to purely entertain, but often times it will spark a conversation about the topic of the movie that leads to inquiry. A teaching moment has been created. Technology in the classroom can do that, too. It can spark an inquisitive discussion. Students become engage and participate. They receive immediate feedback, not just from the teacher, but the other students (Raju, 2013).

What about the students who have difficulties learning? Students with low attention spans will be aided by switching activities (Raju, 2013). This is much easier to accomplish with technology. A short video followed by a mini quiz on the material using clickers can prepare them for an interactive lesson on the computer. If students have physical challenges, close captioning can be used for those with hearing impairments or text to speech software can aid a student with little or no manual skills.

What impact does technology have on students’ learning? Instead of listening to a lecture, students who are involved in the learning by creating videos on the subject – on a historical figure, a mathematical concept, interviewing an expert in their field or a time-lapse representation of a phenomenon occurring in nature – will better retain the information (Bernard, 2009). As a side benefit, while working with technological tools, the students will acquire non-content area skills that will benefit them in their future (Raju, 2013). This could be using Word in a math class to create a glossary of terms or Excel in a social studies or language arts class to create charts and graphs to support a position. Frequently asked questions can be placed on a class blog, wiki or webpage that students can access again later or if they were absent, thus saving class time (Bernard, 2009).

With technology, the classroom does not have to be contained inside four walls. Students can connect with people who are using the what they learned in school in their careers (Raju, 2013). They can see what engineers, archaeologists, botanists and others do in a typical day (or not so typical day). They can learn about other cultures by communicating with other students around the world (Raju, 2013).

Even a little bit of technology in your class, regardless of the content area, can have a dramatic effect on students. I teach students who left school without getting a diploma. A few years ago, my school purchased interactive whiteboards. In order to quickly use them, I created flipcharts that were practice problems. The students would read the problem and answer a multiple choice question using a student response system. This was rote memorization and drill and practice put on a big screen. My students began to work harder in class. They were more involved in the lesson. They enjoyed coming to my class more than some others who weren’t using the technology as much. Did it help? Every year, the percent of students who passed the GED test went up a couple of points. This past year, over ⅔ of my students achieved their GED. These were students who were unsuccessful in the traditional school setting. With the change to the GED 2014 Test, students will need to have higher-ordered thinking skills and even more technological skills. Thus the biggest advantage to using technology in all content areas is because the future depends upon it.